1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, an image processing method, and a storage medium.
2. Related Background Art
In recent years, with performance enhancement of color image forming apparatuses such as a color copier and a color printer, a crime of illegally utilizing the color image forming apparatus to counterfeit paper money, securities, and the like has occurred. A technique of embedding information on a copyright or on limitation of utilization of an image as digital watermark information in a printed image in order to prevent the crime has been presented to the public. In the image forming apparatus, during printing/outputting of image data, it is judged whether the aforementioned identification information is added to an outputted printed matter.
However, in a case in which the image data outputted from an application program is judged, since the image data is finely divided and outputted, once enlarged or reduced in different longitudinal and transverse magnifications by application, and requested to be outputted with a corrected magnification during output, presence/absence of identification information cannot correctly be judged in some cases.
Moreover, the judgment of the presence/absence of the identification information requires a very large processing. Particularly when the judgment is performed in a software processing by a program processing without using expensive hardware, a processing time becomes enormous. Moreover, when a printer unit price is considered, it is difficult in a cost respect to mount the judgment by hardware. However, when the judgment processing retards print time, a product value is unfavorably degraded. Since there is a possibility that a part of the output image includes an object image, all parts of the image need to be subjected to the judgment processing, and a problem occurs that the print processing becomes slow.
Particularly, in recent years, because of enhancement of image resolution, a larger problem has further occurred.